Configuring a Standard or MS-Windows policy to protect NAS volumes or SAN-connected devices
The following procedure describes how to create a policy that uses Replication Director to protect NAS volumes or SAN (block) devices.
Note:
SAN-connected devices are not supported for Clustered Data ONTAP.
On Windows hosts, Replication Director uses the Windows Volume Shadow Services (VSS) framework.
To create a Standard or MS-Windows policy to protect NAS volumes or SAN-connected devices
- In the NetBackup web UI, create a backup policy.
- Configure the options on the policy Attributes tab. The following items are specific to creating a policy for Replication Director:
Policy type: Select Standard for a policy containing UNIX clients. Select MS-Windows for a policy containing Windows clients.
Policy storage: Select the SLP that you want to use that has been configured for snapshot replication.
See Creating a storage lifecycle policy for snapshots and snapshot replication.
Use Replication Director: Enable Use Replication Director to automatically select other options that Replication Director requires.
Select the Options button to see the Replication Director options and the default Configuration parameters as follows:
Snapshot Type
Auto (default): The OpenStorage partner uses the best snapshot technology available to that partner to create the snapshot.
Maximum snapshots
Sets the maximum number of snapshots to be retained at one time.
The default setting is one. Choose the number of snapshots that is appropriate for your environment. Note that the maximum number of snapshots on a NetApp volume is 255.
When the maximum is reached, snapshot rotation occurs: The next snapshot causes the oldest to be deleted.
See Maximum snapshot limit retention type for SLP operations.
Managed by SLP retention is automatically selected if the Fixed or the Expire after Copy retention is currently selected in the SLP.
- Select the Schedules tab and configure the schedules as you would for any other policy.
- Select the Clients tab and specify either:
The client.
The local mount point on the production client.
Note:
To avoid creating multiple snapshots of the same share, do not include multiple clients in one policy that access the same share. Instead, add only one of the clients to the policy so that the share is backed up once. Or, create an NDMP policy to back up the share.
Similarly, do not protect the same share in multiple policies.
- Select the Backup selections tab:
To protect SAN data, indicate the path on the client to be backed up. The Backup selections list may contain any combination of the following:
Drive letters
Folder mounts
A directory on a drive
A single file on a drive or in a directory
Do not specify more than 64 backup selections in a VSS policy. If more than 64 backup selections are specified, the snapshot jobs fail with status code 156. This is due to a documented limitation of the VSS infrastructure. To accommodate more than 64 backup selections, divide the backup selections between multiple policies.
Note:
Backup selections for both SAN devices and NAS volumes are not supported in a single backup policy.
To protect NAS data, specify the backup selection from the client perspective. For example, suppose that the client data resides in a volume (/vol/vol1) on a filer (NAS1):
For a Clustered Data ONTAP policy, the backup selection refers to a volume on a Storage Virtual Machine (or Vserver).
Windows path names must use the Universal Naming Convention (UNC), in the form \\server_name\share_name.
For NFS mounts, the data must be manually mounted by means of the mount command (or by using /etc/fstab), but not auto-mounted.
(NetApp 7-mode only) Use the nosharecache option to mount qtrees that are under the same volume. For example:
mount -o vers=3,nosharecache filer:/vol/volume1/qtree1 /mnt1
(NetApp 7-mode only) To back up a qtree, mount the qtree only. Do not mount the volume. That is, do not include the volume in the backup selection path.
If the volume is mounted and a qtree from the same is used as a backup selection, the NetApp Plug-in for Cohesity NetBackup (NBUPlugin) considers it to be a volume only and performs only volume-specific operations.
For example, to back up a qtree, enter: \\filer\q1
The following entry is incorrect and creates a snapshot of the entire volume: \\filer\volume1\q1
- For the NetBackup Client Service to write to the CIFS volume, it must have permission to do so. When a backup policy is saved, a message displays stating that this permission is necessary. By default, NetBackup is installed as a local system account and may not have the necessary CIFS permissions. Change the logon property of the NetBackup Client Service to an account with access to the CIFS share.
If the logon property is not changed for the NetBackup Client Service, the policy validation fails with status code 4206.
- When the policy configuration is complete, select Save.
- NetBackup checks the policy to ensure that it can run successfully. Select Complete to perform the most comprehensive policy validation.
Only those policy options that are necessary to configure Replication Director are listed here. For descriptions of all policy options, see the NetBackup Administrator's Guide, Volume I or the help.